For years after the incident that took my grandparents’ lives, my parents treated me as though I were more delicate than flowers, more fragile than china. They waited with bated breath, thinking I was going to wake up one morning a shadow of the girl I was before I woke up and found the bloody remains of the two people who loved me more than anything in the world.
They were my favorite people.
By far.
And then they were gone.
Taken in the night while I slept on a different floor, dreaming and blissfully unaware of the madness happening two floors below.
“All right. Well. I suppose you know what’s best for yourself.” She doesn’t mean it. It’s her passive-aggressive way of guilt-tripping me. “I’ll browse the young woman’s section while I’m there. Maybe I can find you something to wear to the wedding as well?”
“I’d prefer to shop for myself this time,” I say. “If you wouldn’t mind.”
Her crestfallen expression is one that I fully expected. I just didn’t expect it to make me feel so awful.
For twenty-two years, she’s had me under her thumb, like a willing and able spoiled little house pet. This is a lot for her to take in—this new side of me—which is why I’m doing it little by little. Baby steps. If it’s gradual, perhaps it’ll be easier on all of us.
“All right. I’ll go,” I say. “But I need to be home by eight.”
Her eyes light. “Are you sure you’re feeling up to it?”
No.
I nod. “Of course.”
“Wonderful. I’ll call for the car. We’ll leave in an hour.” With that, she leaves, and while she didn’t ask me about my plans for tonight, I’m one hundred percent sure she will as soon as we’re in the car with the Chicago skyline in view, when it’s too late for me to change my mind. I’m still not sure what I’m going to tell her. Maybe I’ll say I'm hanging out with Honor again.
As soon as she’s gone, I check my phone, finding a single text from Madden comprised of two question marks.
ME: I’LL BE THERE.
I arrive at Madd Inkk fifteen minutes to nine. Earliness has been instilled in me from a young age and I couldn’t change that if I tried. My father always said, “Ten minutes early is five minutes late.”
There’s a different person working the front desk. A man with cool blue eyes, an unbuttoned chambray shirt cuffed at the sleeves, and a full body armor of tattoos. I think he’s the one who chimed in the first time I met Madden, when I asked him why he didn’t have any tattoos.
“Hi,” I say. “Here to see Madden.”
“Madden,” he bellows, though his eyes are on me. “You got someone.”
I take a seat, cross my legs, and grab a nearby magazine, aimlessly paging through as I wait. And a minute later, Madden appears from behind a white curtain, his gaze laser-focused on me.
The threat of heat creeps up my neck and my throat begins to tighten, making it slightly more difficult to breathe.
It’s as if he makes me nervous now, which is silly. It was just a kiss. We’re both adults. I don’t even like him like that—I just find him insanely attractive. Nothing more, nothing less.
“Come on back,” he says.
I follow him to his station and he pulls the privacy curtain until we’re isolated from the rest of the shop.
It’s quiet out there. I only spotted one other customer, and he was with someone in the piercing room. I suppose Monday nights aren’t all that crazy in a place like this.
“Going to need you to lie back and lift your shirt,” he says. I don’t know why he’s being so professional now. Earlier I could’ve sworn he was trying to flirt with me via text.
Maybe I was reading too hard between the lines.
Wishful thinking and all that.
Now I feel silly.
I lie back on the bed and lift the hem of my shirt, keeping my eyes focused on the ceiling tiles and fluorescent lighting above as he washes his hands.
Cold, gloved fingers trace my skin next, circling the butterfly wings on my rib. For some reason, I feel the need to avoid eye contact. Or maybe it’s my way of swallowing my pride and thinking that if I came here again, he’d flirt with me, he’d want to kiss me again.
“It’s healing nicely,” he says, snapping off his gloves a few seconds later. “You’ve taken good care of it.”
He tosses the gloves in the trash and I sit up, adjusting my shirt back into place before hopping down.
“That’s all?” I ask.
He turns to me, a dark brow lifted. “Is that not how you imagined this would go?”
I smirk. “I mean … I could’ve sent you a picture or something.”
“I offered you the option of skipping this,” he says. “You might want to refer back to our text messages from earlier today.”
Rolling my eyes, I swipe my bag off a nearby chair and sling it over my shoulder. “You’re something, Madden. You know that? You’re really something.”
He leans against the counter by the sink, hands cupping the orange Formica top. “You seem upset about something.”
“What would I possibly have to be upset about?” I bat my lashes, knowing full well that he’s right. If I really think about it though, I’m actually mad at myself—he just happens to be getting the brunt of that.
Madden’s arms fold across his chest. “You just seem … mad. Or something.”
“I … it’s nothing.” I exhale, eyeing the curtain.
“You thought if you came here tonight, I’d kiss you again.”
My cheeks flush. Immediately. Bright hot. I try to tell myself that it was just a lucky guess, that he’s just trying to get a reaction from me, but there’s a chance he read me like a book the second I walked through his doors.
A man like Madden sees all kinds of people, day in and day out. He has the kind of world experience you can’t get in the immaculate bubble that is Park Terrace. He hasn’t spent his life on a leash, secluded from whomever his parents deem unfit to socialize with their son.
“I would,” he says, breaking the silence that lingers between us.
My gaze lifts to his. I’m almost positive he’s messing with me.
“But not here,” he says. “I shouldn’t have kissed you like that earlier today.”
I lift a single shoulder, neither agreeing nor disagreeing.
“It wasn’t cool. It was unprofessional of me,” Madden adds. “And for that, I’m sorry.”
Clearing my throat, I offer a simple, “Thank you.” Though I’m not sure I should be accepting an apology for a kiss that I willed into existence. The whole time we were standing there bickering, I could feel the tension between us simmering, growing hotter with each returned serve until it reached a boiling point—which was when he went in for the kill.
At first I thought I was dreaming.
And then it was over. Just like that.
In a way, I feel cheated.
If it was going to happen, it should’ve been bigger than that. Hotter. Longer. More intense, if that’s even possible.
“What are you doing after this?” he asks.
I pause at first. It’s a Monday night. It’s not like I can pretend to have something exciting going on …
“Going home,” I say. It is what it is.
“You’re my last appointment of the day. Pierce is locking up the shop in fifteen minutes. You want to come upstairs and have a beer?” he asks.
I drank beer once, at a frat party. I didn’t love it.
“There’s a shop on the corner that sells wine,” he says, cocking his head as he examines me. Once again, he’s reading me like a book.
“Beer’s fine,” I say, checking the time on my phone. I don’t want to seem more high maintenance than he already believes me to be.
He chuckles under his breath. “All right then. Let’s head up.”
I follow him to the back, where he punches in a keycode on a door that leads to a hallway with a couple of mailboxes built into a wall and a set of stairs that lead up to the second level. A minute later he’s unlocking his apartment door and my heart is beating so fast, I feel the slightest bit faint.
Maybe it’s the anticipation of the unexpected, the excitement of being somewhere new and fresh and different and completely out of my element, but my head is filling with a thousand scenarios, all of which end with our clothes on the floor and his mouth on mine—amongst other places.
But I’m probably getting ahead of myself. Probably reading into things again.
I do that. I project my hopes and reveries onto other people.
Madden flicks on a light and tosses his keys on his kitchen counter. The place is wide open, like a studio, but much bigger. We’re standing in a small kitchen, and I remove my shoes at the door while he dives headfirst into a magnet-covered refrigerator, retrieving two brown bottles of beer. Uncapping the first one, he hands it to me.
“Thank you.” I take a swig, but I don’t taste a thing. My senses are on overdrive, taking in everything at once.
The place smells of masculine soap combined with laundry from the basket of clean clothes sitting on his kitchen table, and then the smallest hint of stale pizza sitting in a cardboard box on top of his stove.